Coq au vin and Moulin-a-Vent

I’ve always loved those huge jars of cooked meals you can buy in France so was pretty excited when I was sent a jar of coq au vin, or rather Coq au Moulin-à-Vent by Chateau du Moulin-à-Vent the other day.

The dish was cooked by chef Frédéric Menager* who runs a restaurant in Burgundy called La Ferme de la Ruchotte and raises his own chickens.

Coq au vin is basically a Burgundian dish, made traditionally with Chambertin but Beaujolais, especially a serious Beaujolais like Chateau du Moulin-à-Vent’s, works equally well. Interestingly the Chateau had given him the 2000 vintage to cook it with, his preference being for older wines to give the dish added complexity. In fact the dish was not obviously ‘winey’ just deeply flavoured.

They also sent two different cuvées to pair with it, both 2018s, the Champ de Cour and the Les Vérillats. The Champ de Cour, the more savoury of the two, worked best I thought though the Vérillats was delicious too and both were great with the Vacherin cheese we had afterwards.

Unfortunately they’re not inexpensive. The Champ de Cour costs £204 for a case of six bottles from the Fine Wine Company and Stannary Wine apparently stocks the Vérillats but I can’t find it on their website.

*hilariously translated in the English version of the website as Fred Household

See also Four favourite wine matches for coq au vin

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